Conventionally, there is no way of knowing who is/was in the vicinity of a scene of a crime, accident, or the like to identify potential witnesses and suspects. There is also no effective means for detecting and communicating threat information on a real time basis, such as detecting a person who is wanted for a violent crime or a gang members in the vicinity of an officer, or detecting individuals/devices that have an abnormal pattern of appearance at terrorist targets, at certain types of incidents such as fire scenes, or specific classes of individuals at specific classes of locations (e.g., a sex offender loitering near a playground). Video is a potential option, but is limited due to image quality in both day time and night time. Video also requires an image to be in the field of view which does not work well for individuals which hide from camera vision. Further, video is expensive to deploy and with the current state of facial analytics, requires human resources to detect threats. Another option is the use of a cell phone Mobile Identification Number (MIN), but the issue here is the number of users on a cell site which is designed for 3 mile radius can be quite large which in turn causes delays in tracking down the proper suspect or individuals present at an incident. Additionally, in many instances, a warrant must be issued for tracking citizen location, and a subpoena is required to identify owners of a MIN. This prevents real time detection and tracking.
There is also a need for a system which allows users in a small geographic area to be tracked. This need is driven by the desire to identify which officers have arrived on the scene of an incident, as many times officers come to the scene of an incident without being dispatched. The need to track individuals in a small geographic area is also driven by the desire to identify citizens at the location of an incident for purposes of identifying and tracking suspects, as well as identifying potential witnesses and threats. While Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) could be used, not every officer carries a portable device with GPS, and officers may arrive on scene from other jurisdictions that do not share location tracking between agencies. MIN solutions are unable to address small geographic area tracking and cannot be coupled with local intelligence such as officer inputs, captured images, etc. on a real time basis.
In public safety environments (e.g., police), there is also a need to track patterns of individuals without knowing their identity. For example determining that ID #1234 is present in five different areas where crimes have occurred or has been traveling with ID#5678 which has been at the scene of a recent crime could allow public safety officers to look for movement patterns between ID numbers and to track and locate suspects for apprehension or questioning.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.